Your Greater Path has been chosen. Direct the evolution of your Lower Paths. You are capable of using 11,203 Biomass (…).

! Size

Acid (Hydrochloric)

Articulated Arms

Bladed Legs (412)

Durability

Electric Exoskeleton (1019)

Lockjaw Mandibles

Rending Claws (431)

Scorpion Stinger

Slingshot Feeding (421)

Springlegs

Strength

Superior Compound Eyes

Superior Pheromones (501)

Venom (Neurotoxin)

Wings (401)

Custom (Varying)

! Poisonous Gleam (1129)

! Rapid Regeneration

Biomass Essence Combinations

Bladed Springlegs (1023) (Conflict)

Poisonous Flesh (1052) (Conflict)

Venomous Acid (1324) (Conflict)

(…)

Absorbable Commendations: Accelerated Healing (9984) (Conflict)

Her eyes were immediately drawn to the absurdly expensive Commendation at the tail end of the long list of text. Accelerated Healing… she must have gotten it from one of the fourth Stage Myrmekes she’d killed somewhere in the gap in her memory.

If she didn’t already have Rapid Regeneration, such a thing might have been tempting enough for her to get it… but she did, and so it wasn’t. It would probably be something great for the future, though, as it would passively increase the rate at which she healed- and for free! She was very sad that it conflicted with the changes that Rapid Regeneration had made to her body.

Moving on from that, she noticed two new possible Lower Paths, Electric Exoskeleton and Superior Pheromones. More than that, she noticed that Size, which had remained untouched for quite a while, suddenly had an exclamation mark like Rapid Regeneration and Poisonous Gleam did. Lastly, and most importantly, she noticed the ‘Custom’ Lower Path option.

First and foremost, Electric Exoskeleton would give her the ability to convert her energy into raw electric power on the surface of her exoskeleton, harming whatever was attacking it.

Electric Exoskeleton works by adding a small organ called the ‘energy convert-

“Quit that,” She told the System. She wasn’t sure why it was doing that; did the System think she would want to know? Did it just think it was interesting? It seemed like it had gained a bit of personality, so maybe.

Superior Pheromones would grant her greater control over her pheromones, allowing her to express a grander range of emotions, thoughts, and et cetera, which would help a lot with communication. It would also increase the power of the pheromones that she could emit and their precision, which would allow her to ‘stun’ weaker Myrmekes around her by flooding their senses with, say, an extremely powerful intent to kill.

Weirdly, she felt like she already had something like that, tentatively connected to her second Commendation. Still, such a Lower Path would be useful.

Moving on... Size had an exclamation mark. She concentrated on it, but the text didn’t help to elaborate.

“System?” She asked.

Taking into account your desire to remain agile, Size can be altered to the point that it is more accurate to describe it as ‘Mass’. Rather than increase your size, it will make your body denser and more compressed. This is a far more inefficient way of gaining raw strength, but the added weight and durability of the Lower Path makes it far more suitable. Would you like to go forward with the conversion? It is also possible to split ‘Mass’ into its own Lower Path, but this would cost Biomass, as the creation of a Lower Path would be expensive.

For the first time ever, she wondered how much of the evolution process was her nature as a Myrmeke and how much of it was guided by the Myrmidon Control System. Clearly, the System had some control over it, as it was apparently capable of commandeering one of her Lower Paths.

She decided to let it convert Size into Mass, as she had no need or want to increase her size at the moment anyway, and Mass sounded more useful than Size to her by a mile. Mostly, it was because creating the Lower Path on its own would cost 1003 Biomass.

Finally, she got around to what was quite possibly the most important new addition; ‘Custom’. It wasn’t hard to figure out what it did, as the text gave her an instinctive understanding. It was important but simple; she could create new Lower Paths. The creations would be extremely expensive, and that wasn’t even considering the cost to actually acquire whatever she created. She decided to leave that alone for now.

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After a little bit of searching through the Biomass Essence Combinations available to her, she started getting ready to make her decisions.

First things first… she decided to remove her Scorpion Stinger. It changed her center of gravity far too much, and it felt almost entirely useless against her kin. It wasn’t able to break through their exoskeletons and couldn’t even get through the flexible chitin that covered the joints quick enough to do anything significant- she was having a hard time getting any use out of it even against the third Stage Myrmekes she’d been hunting.

On that note… there were a bunch of Lower Paths that she could hardly get any good use of. With a bit of reluctance, she decided to cut away her Venomous Lockjaw Mandibles and Venom, as the latter Lower Path wasn’t useful without some way to get it into her opponents.

She was glad to see that she still had Lockjaw Mandibles; the only difference was that they didn’t have the venomous spikes all over them anymore.

In exchange for these minor sacrifices, the amount of Biomass she could use went from 11,203 to 13,102. The amount was drastically more than she expected. The System responded to her curiosity.

Salvaging Biomass is something your body is extremely well-suited to do to begin with, and that Biomass is your own; your body understands it far, far better than it understands the Biomass of others. Thus, you lost very little in the process of salvaging it, and you invested quite heavily into your Venom and a moderate amount into your Scorpion Tail. Moreover, while you didn’t invest very strongly into your Venomous Lockjaw Mandibles, they naturally became stronger as you evolved even without deliberate investment.

She was probably more than capable of having figured that out on her own, but having it all laid out for her like this by the System made it easy and without doubt; she liked that it had seemingly become sentient, even if it was concerning. She didn’t like that her actions were being so heavily monitored and controlled to begin with, and could only imagine that it would become worse.

Getting back on track, she decided to categorize what she most urgently needed or wanted by using a scale of one to ten, ten being an urgent need and one being an outright dislike of the Lower Path presented.

∑

You have chosen:

Articulated Arms (3500) 3500

Mass (2000) 5500

! Rapid Regeneration (1000) 6500

Durability (500) 7000

Rending Claws (500) 7500

Strength (500) 8000

Superior Compound Eyes (500) 8500

Superior Pheromones (500) 9000

She had some Biomass left over because she wasn’t done. At least two hours had passed since she entered her egg, in which she’d thoroughly interrogated the System for everything she could get out of it. Thus, she was pretty well-prepared for what was happening.

Now that she had chosen these things and their ‘budget’, she would be sent to-

Her mind twisted strangely, and a moment later, it felt like she could see even in the black goo she was submerged in. It was not real, though; she was seeing something in her own mind. It was difficult to describe.

The ‘something’ she was seeing was her- what would be her, rather. The very same list of what she’d chosen and how much Biomass each choice had been allocated floated off to the side on its own.

The whole thing sort of reminded her of the Self-Affirmation pseudo-feature. The System had said it would, and it had been right- because the pseudo-feature had been based on this, according to it.

She got started manipulating her body, starting first with her Articulated Arms. She’d dropped the Biomass Essence Combination that gave it blades, as that was something she could do on her own… in fact, the only purpose she saw for the Biomass Essence Combinations at all now was for creatures outside of her kin. The thought was strange; she hadn’t seen even an inkling of a single other creature aside from their hive, the Myrmidons. Were there even other creatures? She was pretty sure there were…

‘…Back on track,’ She refocused.

The first thing she did was ‘zoom in’ on her Articulated Arms. According to the System, all that it took to enact the changes was to imagine it, and it worked perfectly; she imagined a second set of Articulated Arms appearing on her envisioned forms’ back, and they did, along with a message telling her how much it’d cost.

1523 Biomass would be necessary.

There was plenty more Biomass she intended to expend on her Articulated Arms, and she did. Thirty minutes crawled by as she did, but eventually, they were finished. The process was significantly harder than she’d expected, as she had to manually design them in a way that was feasible.

On her projections’ back, four Articulated Arms would extend five feet into the air. The front two were bulky and powerful, as wide as her legs, clearly meant for raw strength. Inch-long claws jutted from her fingertips, even more dangerous-looking than her old Bladed Articulated Arms. Lastly, the arms had an endoskeleton; bone-like chitin extended through the limbs, making it significantly harder for them to be torn off. It did mean that the efficiency of her arms would drop drastically if the bones were broken, though.

The second set that rested a bit further behind them was clearly also meant for combat, but of a more precise kind. While the front pair was meant to rip and shred, breaking chitin and stopping even Lockjaw Mandibles, they were meant to go for eyeballs, joints, wings, and et cetera. They lacked an endoskeleton, but instead had much more intricate and precise hands. She’d never been able to enact her plan to make things with them before, but hoped that the changes would make it more viable.

When she’d finished with all that, she’d just dumped the leftover Biomass into the arms’ strength and finally started to move on. There was a lot she needed to do, after all, and while she wasn’t on a very strict time limit, she still needed to head towards Cavern 1 and was vulnerable until she finished.

She’d been testing her arms throughout, but she decided to watch their finished forms in action. She gained control over the weird mental projection of her new body, and was very happy with how comfortable the arms felt on her back. Before, they’d felt a bit off, but now they felt as easy to control as her legs, antennae and mandibles. The front pair didn’t break even when a projected fourth Stage Myrmeke tried to tear them off with its Lockjaw Mandibles, and they managed to get through its exoskeleton with relative ease. Her more precise and flexible pair easily shredded wings, eyes and got into joints and wriggled into cracks in its armor to shred its insides. Overall, she was very satisfied with her handiwork.

She moved to her general body next- where she probably should’ve started- and began trying to make her body as hard to grab as she could. She tried to round out as many areas as possible to make it harder for mandibles to get a good grip on her exoskeleton, and even had her thorax and abdomen’s exoskeleton jut out a little bit to provide some additional protection to her legs, which she’d also reinforced. That was just the exoskeleton side of things; at the same time, she tried to make her body even more flexible, so that she could twist and turn with greater ease in order to dodge attacks. After that, she added the Rending Claws to the ends of her legs, which would be great for traction and give her the means to defend herself even if she ended up getting flipped onto her back.

After that, she made minor changes to the shape of her mandibles and such, but they were quick and easy. Her Articulated Arms had definitely been the hardest part, as the rest of her body hadn’t needed many changes done to them in order to get her investments to work. Mass, Durability and Strength were good examples; none of their budgets were spent on anything aside from what they were meant to do, which was make her body denser, stronger and more durable.

She’d only spent 1021 unbound Biomass on the sculpting of her body, and thus spent the excess on her Strength, Mass and Durability.

Her new form was finished, and as she took control over the projection, she felt at home in it in a way that she’d felt in no other newly-made form. Controlling her arms had always been a bit difficult before, but was now as easy as walking; the twists and turns involved in the acrobatics she performed to dodge attacks had previously been uncomfortable and stilted, but were now done with the fluidity and ease in which she sprinted.

You’re finished, then? The system asked. Its more personable way of speaking had become even more pronounced in the hours she’d spent interrogating it- it was young and still developing, she supposed. It had helped her progress in her understanding of the system’s language significantly- which didn’t seem like much, but now that she could think in the language with relatively few problems, her mind felt significantly more efficient, as did mentally communicating with the System.

“Yes,” She told it.